Dog Collars and Rabbit Corpses

Room in the Inn

Inn the Beginning





Where to start? I've had a night now to reflect on my first experiences, I was shell shocked when we first arrived. Just clearing the airport the scrutiny, individuals picked out, singled out, questioned, strange to see from a nation who suffered so much so similar. Our guide met us and welcomed us and began to share stories.As we drove from the airport our first glimpses of what our guide labeled as the apartheid system that is in operation here. Men running from one area to the other to cross borders and find work. The wall such a big feature of this modern and changing landscape. So much of the Biblical landscape being stripped of it beauty and replaced with concrete. The wall on the journey from the airport built from attractive stone to make it more 'acceptable'.

That was a post I never managed to finish. Since I arrived here I wanted so desperatley to write something, not particularly that made any sense to others but made sense to me. Others here have written much some of it profound but what does it mean to me?

I wondered before I came how this place would make me feel I thought I had prepared but no nothing can prepare you. There have been so many stories of injustice. Houses demolished because the Israeli government can. People prevented from working, forced to queue from midnight in order to work the following day. We have seen conditions of living which you would think we illegal. Yet through all these stories through all these people comes grace. Grace to accept, grace to try and make sense grace to want to forgive. Our experiences are but a snapshot of their lives. Thank you for letting me in for you have changed my life forever.

Gracious God,
who sees beyond what we see,
who understands more than we can ever know,
help Palestine to be a land of peace,
to once again become a land flowing with milk and honey,
and may her people experience HOPE once more.

As we drove away from Hebron yesterday having been prevented by Israeli soldiers and settlers from going where we wanted. As we left Hebron yesterday having witnessed an Palestinian young man held a gunpoint for daing to ask (politely) why he could not continue I listened to the words of Micheal Franti on my Ipod and I leave them with you now.


I don't need a passport to walk on this earth
Anywhere I go cause I was made of this earth I'm
born of this earth, I breathe of this earth, and
even with the pain I believe in this earth So I
wake up every morning and I'm stepping on the
floor I wake up every morning and I'm stepping out
the door I got faith in the sky, faith in the one,
I got faith in the people walkin underneath the
sun Cause every bit of land is a holy land, and
every drop of water is a holy water, and every
single child is son or the daughter of the one
earth mama and the one earth papa So don't tell
a man that he cant come here, cause he got brown
eyes and a wavy kind of hair And don't tell a
woman that she cant go there, because she prays a
little different to a god up there You say
you're a Christian cause god made you, you say
you're a Muslim cause god made you, you say
you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew And then
we all kill each other cause god told us too?

Labels: Faith, Greenbelt, Holidays, Ministry

posted by Stuart @ Sunday, October 19, 2008